the role of social capital in the development of urban areas zanjan with an emphasis on quality of life Case Study : (zanjan city )

نویسندگان [English]

N. Marsoosi؛ Khodadadi

چکیده [English]

The role of social capitals in urban development with the emphasis on life quality (Case study: Zanjan city)
Expended abstract
Urban rapid development, living in the city and in crease in city population in country is one of major problems of the cities. Nowadays, one of the solutions which can decrease the urban problems is the empowering the social capital role in city communities. This concept is considered one of the empowering factors in group relations, networks, and solidarities "among human beings" , "human beings and organizations" and "organization with each other" in urban development and they form the infrastructure of cultural, economical, and political development of a city, and a metropolitan, and even a country.The other approach says that nowadays in the developing and undeveloped countries, the increased growth of urbanism and formation of new scale of urban development in the recent decades have caused the urban and contemporaneous urbanism encounter with new challenges such as the increase of official department deficiency, irresponsibility of executive department, the low amount of trust among people and among people and personnel, and lack of incorporative morale in order to improve the social states, social perverts, fade of identity and social dependence, development of environmental and social ecology problems, wonderful inequality of society and economic, and in general decrease of life quality. Due to extensity of scantling and change in the entity and complexity of urban matters, it is avoidable to look thoroughly and note to the coact of matters in order to solve them constantly. Therefore in the urban society, citizens enroll in the widespread social network by living in the urban area and mutual reaction with each other and with urban management, potentially and effectively, in which the amount and actions of these reactions play an important role in the economic and urban management (Romiani, 1392, p. 35). Social capital is emphasized since it has an effective role in these reactions in the development and quality of citizen life (Kiss et al, 2008: 388-399, as cited in Romiani, 1392, 38). Considering this matter, Robert Putnam, the politics highbrow applies the social capital term in the wide sense and defines it as "aspects of social organization such as networks, norms and trust that facilitates bailout and cooperation to access to mutual resources and provides access to public goods (Thamizoli and Prabhakar, 2009, p.193). His definition notes to advantages of social networks (Snelgrove, 2009: 1993) and aspects of social cohesion such as trust between individual and norms of reciprocity and it includes characteristics and qualities of social relations (Snelgrove, 2009: 1993). So in sidelong of human capitals, financial and economical capitals, the social capitals have found more importance. This concept implies to :::union:::s, the relations among members of one network as a valuable resource that induce accessibility to aims by norm creation and mutual trust (Ognibene, 2010 23). The social capital that has a socialistic history is considered as successful lever and is supported too much. In other words, the social capital is assigned as a proper place to use human capital and is a way to achieve success. As some writers argue that social capital is a hidden nexus between social inequalities and healthy and on the other hand it gives value to people life and makes the life simple and more enjoyable (Mohan and all, 2005:26). So social capital role is being influenced by time and place in the life quality. The components and constituent factors will be different according to time period and geographical place. When life facilities are in access, they provide possibility of favorable life for citizens. Besides the structures improvement and their recovery, it responds to various needs of people in the economic, social, nature, education, urban facilities, place dependence, feel of beauty, place quality fields, and so on (Beumer, 2010: 1-2). In other words, life improvement leads to decrease of poverty, change in the people income, life conditions, health state, environment, moral and mental stress, leisure, family happiness, and social relations (Woodhouse, 2006:22). Therefore, the social variables especially social capital plays a key role in the process of life quality promotion because the consensus and social trust do not form without people incorporation. The investigation of developmental program of local and national represents this matter, too. Since social capital create cooperation among people like glue and it is a resource of social reacts in the different fields of life such as public fields in the local level (micro) to government level (macro). The existence of this capital makes the society powerful when encounter with problem and its decrease leads to emergence of social problems. So the purpose of this research is to survey social capital role in Zanjan city development and it is going to answer the question whether social capital can lead to improvement of life quality in the area of the study.The research aim is survey of social capital role in the development of Zanjan city and it attempts to answer the question wether social can lead to life quality improvement in the under study region. Therefore, the research type is applied and its method is descriptive - analytic. Library and field methods (questionnaire, observation, and interview) were used to gather the data. One- sample T. Fridman. Spearman, and factor analysis have bean used to analyze the data. Therefore, research findings showed that the factors including social trust rattem social participation, social coherence, social capital, and social abnorms have the highest effect on urban development and life quality in Zanjan city based on people view. Amongst them, the highest effect is related to social trust rate with 38-63% and the lowest is for social abnorms with 4.2%.On the other hand, cities as the biggest inhabitant of human beings contain varied human activities which are exposed to great changes in the physical environment unprecedented after industrial revolution period and in social structure as a result. The result of these changes is seen clearly on the social structures especially decrease in social partnership and solidarity as the study of the socialist including Ferdinand, Tonnis, and Georg showed. Tonnis believed that the trust, solidarity, and partnership among people and the neighborhood groups in the traditional communities are gradually decreased in the long- term.In addition, development of social virtual networks leads to "much erosion in social relationship" because of decrease in relativeness and neighborhood. This issue results in increase in social challenges in the urban development. Therefore, it is said that, todays, the common aim of development in local, national, and international levels is life improvement and the future life of human relies on better understanding of the factors. So, some of these factors have influence on the human life quality. On the other hand, some of these factors are related to the quality of our relationship with other groups, formal and informal organizations which are named as the social capital as the lost factor in development. In this process, social capital acts as the empowering factors in group relations, networks, and solidarities "among human beings", "human beings and organizations" and "organization with each other" Therefore, the term social capital is used for the first time in the classic work of Jacob "Death and is life of American big cities" (1961). The aim of this research was to survey social capital role in Zanjan city development and it is going to answer the question whether social capital can lead to improvement of life quality in the area of the study. The theoretical studies are taken into account to manifest the review of the literature.They are done by referring to the library studies, books papers, and thesis. As a consequence, Likert scale (partnership, trust, solidarity) and life quality is used to create a question and find an answer to the research question. The questionnaire was distributed in the study area and completed by residents of that region then it is analyzed.. Descriptive and inferential statistics (Factor analysis) in SPSS software were used to analyze the data. The population of the study was inhabitants of Zanjan city. Based on censorship data in 2012, population of Zanjan is 341801 people in 4 regions and the family number was 89800. 384 questionnaires were distributed among people randomly. The result of t- test showed that the average gained values in the elements of (Trust, network, and life quality) is less than average point (3). This value is less than average point (3) for the dimensions of social trust, local networks, and life quality and this value shows more than point (3) for the dimensions of social cooperation and cohesion. They are based on the respondents view.Therefore, the two indices showed that cooperation in the thinking and consulting fields of life place improvement has a direct relationship with local councils, cooperation in solving the city problem, and partnership of the local and urban organizations in solving the problems. On the other hand, social solidarity has a direct relationship with the changes of common values among citizens, social deviational and abnormalities. It is natural that when social solidarity is high, social abnormalities including corruption is less in the society. Friedman test showed that there is significant difference among the average of social capital dimension of sample families at alpha level (0/001). Amongst them, the highest ranking average is for partnership (3/40), social solidarity (3/37) respectively and the lowest is for local network (2.52). Therefore, it is claimed that citizen partnership in general affairs and urban management is evaluated positively because urban management and services are governmental- centered and local organization are weak. Likewise, non- parametric analysis correlation among the components of social capital shows there is a direct relationship among all dimensions. The direct and indirect effects of indices such as social partnership, social solidarity, social trust, and local organizations on life quality is calculated by analysis test which shows that the highest is for social partnership (0.427). therefore, the findings showed that the rate of people partnership with local councils, local organization, police, etc. is notably increased in comparison to some years ago â so, this dimension is recognized as the main factor among social components in life quality development and the local organization dimension has the lowest effect in the life quality development of area of the study therefore, there is significant relationship between social capital and life quality increase in urban areas based on the tangible evidence.
Suggestions
According to the results, the promotion backgrounds of entity and trust networks development should be provided in the city sections.
1. To create a proper culture of city by governments in which three people entity includes (local groups), (bazar economic), (private section) and political entity (government) to act together, but not put against and in opposition to each other.
2. Formation of sympathizer and collaborator groups in locals and fellowship of citizens in that in order to incorporate and acting without considering ethnic and religious differences.
3. to create and support the role of local groups in the incorporative of local people to decide about city management and life quality.
4. The development of social capitals should be systematic and should be analyzed in line with development of social capital.
5. The improvement of mosques roles due to trustee parties' authority among people.
6. The appointment of more and intimate relations between social entities and urban dwellers to increase their knowledge and to obtain their trust.
7. The creation of advisory committee and holding of educational-participatory meetings in the local societies.
8. the characterization of participatory structure for people and make them understandable for citizens.

کلیدواژه‌ها [English]

Keywords: Social Capital, life quality, Urban Development, Zanjan city